Photograph by Flickr user Dave Fayram (CC-usage).

Editor’s note: Is typography destiny?  neweurasia’s Annasoltan explores the ramifications of Turkmenistan’s project to Latinize its alphabet.  This is the latest in neweurasia’s ongoing coverage of the battle for control of Central Asia’s alphabets.  Also, make sure to check out Mirsulzshan’s post on the ICANN’s decision to “de-Latinize” URLs on the Web.

Fortune-tellers examine our palms to peer into our pasts and futures.  In a similar way, one shall soon be able to determine the generation to which a Turkmen belongs by examining their writing style, specifically the letters they use.

In my last post I explored the geopolitics behind Niyazov’s decision to Latinize the Turkmen alphabet, and some of the wackiness that has resulted.  In this post I will explore how Latinization has divided the nation according to writing styles, with the younger generations using the Latin script and the older ones still using the Cyrillic.   Indeed, the changeover has been quick that some Turkmen never learned how to properly write in either alphabet.

The calligraphy of ideology

The Latin alphabet has taken a long journey to Central Asia.  The Arabic alphabet dominated prior to 1928, when Soviet authorities introduced Latin-based alphabets in order to cut off the region’s Muslim and Turkic communities from the Islamic world and traditions.  The Latin alphabet was proclaimed as the most ideal to reflect the “true” phonetic needs of the various national languages.  The Soviet move also coincided with Ataturk’s alphabet reforms in Turkey.  However, only a decade later, in 1940 Stalin replaced the Latin alphabet with the Cyrillic one.  His goal was to “Sovietize” the Union into “one Soviet nation”.

The idea of reverting to the Latin script was first endorsed by the Agzybirlik (Unity) opposition movement in 1989, shortly before the break-up of the Soviet Union.  Niyazov, who was the then First Secretary of the Turkmenistan Communist Party, originally opposed the idea.  However, when it became clear that Turkmenistan would become independent,  he saw a golden opportunity for his new state-building program.  Like the Soviets in 1928, he envisioned Latinization as a way to cut off his nation from its past, this time of Communist domination.

Latinization was sped up with the introduction of his new “spiritual guide book”, the Ruhnama, which was published in 2000 in the new script.  By mandating that the book be taught in schools and universities, Niyazov was in part attempting to train his nation in the new script, wedding his ideas to the Latin-based alphabet.  Moreover, he circumscribed the re-publishing of classics from other language traditions, especially Russian.  Thus it is in this policy that we can see the generation divide.

The current young generation was brought up with nothing more than the Ruhnama while older generations ended up not able to read their own national newspapers.  Thus Turkmens, instead of linking to the progressive currents of the outside world, have found themselves effectively deprived from meaningful literature free of propaganda.

Is the future readable in Latin?

Despite the dark sides, many Turkmen actually see the adoption of the Latin script as a positive development.  There is optimism that in the long term the shift to the Latin script, which enjoys a reputation as the script of modernization and technology, was a step in the right direction and with time it ought to bring benefits.

The improvement in Internet accessibility for ordinary people, albeit only for a very small segment of the population, raises some hope.  Hugh Pope, Turkey/Cyprus Project director at the International Crisis Group who is also a former Istanbul-based reporter of Wall Street Journal and the author of the book, Sons of the Conquerors: the Rise of the Turkic world, remarks to me:

With the ability to learn the languages, the Latin alphabet makes it easier to use the Internet, although the free access to Internet is more important. The Latin alphabet will obviously bring [Turkmenistan] closer to a pluralist culture.

The internet symbolizes the greater degree of communication that many Turkmens desire with the outside world.  Halmurat Soinov, a former member of parliament, remarked to me:

The Latin script has an essential part in the development of the country and the higher education of Turkmen youth, in the integration and communication. Almost all of the higher education students are today able to speak English. That is a positive result of the introduction of the Latins script in Turkmen schools.

I hope that Soinov is right in the end.  But it is important to remember that alphabets are only lines on a page: what matters are the ideas and dreams behind them.